The Ben Shapiro Show - A Country Without Borders

00:00:00.000 So Joe Biden's illegal immigration crisis is real and it is really, really growing.

00:00:04.000 Take a look at this graphic from the New York Times website.

00:00:06.000 It's from today about border encounters in 2023.

00:00:09.000 This is absolutely stunning.

00:00:11.000 I want to go through it in detail because it definitely shows just how open Joe Biden has left the border.

00:00:16.000 So in 2023, Again, this is according to U.S.

00:00:19.000 Customs and Border Protection.

00:00:20.000 There were 3.1 million attempted border crossings at the U.S.

00:00:25.000 southern border in 2023.

00:00:26.000 So the question becomes, one, what's driving that?

00:00:30.000 And two, how many of those people got in?

00:00:32.000 And it's question two that answers question one.

00:00:35.000 If lots of people are showing up at the border and lots of people are getting in, that of course is going to drive more people to the borders.

00:00:40.000 You had 3.1 million people Showing up again at the southern border.

00:00:44.000 And here's how this breaks down.

00:00:47.000 600,000 of those people entered undetected.

00:00:50.000 That is an estimate by CBP.

00:00:52.000 Those would be the known gotaways.

00:00:54.000 Now, there's a whole category here that is not even on the chart.

00:00:57.000 Those would be the unknown gotaways.

00:00:59.000 And we don't really have an idea of how many unknown gotaways there are.

00:01:02.000 The way that we know the known gotaways is because there is camera coverage of large swaths of the American border.

00:01:07.000 But We don't always have Border Patrol agents who are sitting on every single camera all the time.

00:01:13.000 The way that it works is that you have these border cameras and they are loaded onto essentially giant pylons and there are four of them pointed in all directions.

00:01:21.000 But if you have one Border Patrol agent who's in charge of 20 cameras, there are going to be some people he doesn't see when they rush into the country.

00:01:27.000 He goes for a bathroom break and suddenly that's when somebody comes through.

00:01:30.000 According to the people I know at Customs and Border Protection, what you are really looking at is probably another 400,000 people who have entered undetected.

00:01:39.000 Minimum.

00:01:39.000 So you're talking about a million people who have entered undetected.

00:01:42.000 This is in 2023 alone.

00:01:43.000 Okay, now, that still leaves 2.5 million people who had encounters with U.S.

00:01:48.000 Customs and Border Protection.

00:01:49.000 Now, the way we tend to think of that, and this is why a lot of this is weasel words, when you think of encounters by U.S.

00:01:55.000 Customs and Border Protection, what you think of is a Border Patrol agent stumbles upon an illegal immigrant and tells him to go home.

00:02:01.000 Wrong.

00:02:02.000 That never happens almost ever.

00:02:04.000 It now used to happen a lot more under Title 42.

00:02:07.000 Title 42 was a provision of federal law that suggested that if you were fearful that people were entering the country with disease, you could simply turn them back at the border.

00:02:16.000 And that was used for several years in the aftermath of COVID-19.

00:02:20.000 But it did end.

00:02:22.000 So, even in 2023, there are 565,000 people who are expelled under Title 42.

00:02:24.000 565,000 people were expelled under Title 42.

00:02:28.000 565,000 people.

00:02:30.000 Those effectively speaking, were the only people who were expelled.

00:02:33.000 You had about 180,000 people who were voluntary departures and 185,000 people who were expedited removals.

00:02:39.000 Those would be people who had, like, criminal backgrounds, for example.

00:02:43.000 So the total number of people out of 3.1 million who received a deportation order or who were expelled 870,000. But remember, Title 42 has now gone away. That

00:02:52.000 means 560,000 people this year in 2024, if these numbers were to remain steady, would now enter the

00:02:58.000 United States. That means that aside from Title 42, which again, was only in application

00:03:04.000 temporarily, under Title 42, 565,000 people are turned away.

00:03:10.000 All those people would now enter, which means a grand total of 365,000 people who are actually removed or departed voluntarily because, for example, they realized that they were going to be dinged on a criminal background check.

00:03:22.000 Now, we get to the people who were added to the docket and what happened to the rest of them.

00:03:27.000 So, of the people who were processed under Title 8, that was 1.9 million people.

00:03:30.000 Only 365,000 of those people were actually removed.

00:03:34.000 Every other person entered the United States.

00:03:37.000 All of them.

00:03:38.000 That means that you're talking about, just from this chart alone, 2.4 million people in 2023 who entered the United States.

00:03:46.000 The vast majority of those people are here illegally. 0.96

00:03:48.000 They do not have asylum protected status, refugee status.

00:03:52.000 That refugee or asylum status has to be proved in a court of law.

00:03:56.000 But those people have not proved anything in a court of law.

00:03:58.000 Instead, they've come to the border.

00:03:59.000 They claim that they are, in fact, asylees from their home countries.

00:04:04.000 That they are people who cannot go back, because if they go back, they'll be killed, or they'll be persecuted, or whatever.

00:04:11.000 And then, because we are not processing them, and because when we do process them, our standards are too low, we're allowing everybody into the country. 1.00

00:04:17.000 So even according to this New York Times chart, you had a minimum of 2.4 million people who crossed the U.S.

00:04:24.000 southern border in 2023.

00:04:26.000 Now understand, by way of contrast, that during the entirety of the Trump administration, the number of border encounters during the entirety of the Trump administration was 1.6 million.

00:04:38.000 You had 2.4 million people enter last year alone under Joe Biden.

00:04:43.000 That is an insane number and none of those people are going away.

00:04:45.000 Once people are brought into the United States and they are given a date to show up later, the vast majority of them are never going to show up later because why would they possibly show up?

00:04:51.000 They've been integrated into American society.

00:04:53.000 They're receiving whatever benefits they can receive.

00:04:55.000 They're in California, actually real estate benefits, maybe up to and including healthcare.

00:05:00.000 Why exactly would they show up for a court date where they may very well be deported if they can't prove that they have a real asylum claim?

00:05:06.000 So instead, they just stay.

00:05:08.000 That is what Joe Biden has done.

00:05:10.000 And he has done that because there were executive orders in place under Donald Trump that prevented a lot of this.

00:05:14.000 Not only Title 42, but most prominently, Remain in Mexico. 0.94

00:05:17.000 Remain in Mexico said that if you showed up at the border and you said, I fear to go back to my home country, the Trump administration said, okay, wait in Mexico.

00:05:25.000 We'll figure it out.

00:05:26.000 We have to process you, but you need to wait in Mexico.

00:05:29.000 Which means you were not going to be released into the interior because there was a good shot that you actually would have to show up for your court case and then you would be rejected.

00:05:36.000 And in the meantime, you can't just disappear in Chicago or New York or Atlanta or Denver or wherever.

00:05:42.000 But Joe Biden got rid of that like day one.

00:05:43.000 That was one of the very first things that he did was get rid of remaining Mexico. 1.00

00:05:48.000 That is the reason you are seeing this vast, extraordinary increase in illegal immigration at the U.S.

00:05:54.000 southern border.

00:05:54.000 It's amazing.

00:05:56.000 So the impact of all of this is absolutely insane.

00:05:59.000 What is that impact?

00:06:00.000 Well, for example, so many illegal immigrants are now arriving on the East Coast of New York that they're being stored on like football fields. 1.00

00:06:07.000 And when there's bad weather, they have to be moved somewhere.

00:06:10.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

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00:07:08.000 So in Brooklyn, a school was legitimately shut down.

00:07:11.000 The students told to learn from home because the school facilities had to be used to house illegal immigrants. 1.00

00:07:17.000 Here's some video.

00:07:26.000 Thanks.

00:07:28.000 And they're being brought presumably directly into The school buildings.

00:07:37.000 This is what school buildings are for now.

00:07:39.000 Your public resources being used to house illegal immigrants from foreign countries while kids are told they have to stay home from school and learn remote as though we're still in the middle of COVID or as though schools should have ever been closed during COVID. 0.90

00:07:49.000 According to the New York Post, students at Brooklyn High School were kicked out of the classroom to make room for nearly 2,000 migrants who were evacuated from a controversial tent shelter due to a monster storm closing in on the Big Apple.

00:07:59.000 The city made the move amid concerns a massive migrant tent at Floyd Bennett Field would collapse from torrential rains and gusting winds, packing them instead into the second-floor gym at James Madison High School five miles away.

00:08:09.000 A local resident who identified himself only as Rob said, quote, this is effed up.

00:08:12.000 It's a litmus test.

00:08:13.000 They're using a storm, a legitimate situation, where they're testing this out.

00:08:16.000 I guarantee you they'll be here for the entire summer.

00:08:18.000 There's 1,900 people getting thrown out into my neighborhood, half a block from where I live, and I don't know who they are.

00:08:22.000 They're not vetted.

00:08:23.000 A lot of them have criminal records and backgrounds we don't even know.

00:08:27.000 One mom went off on the migrants as they pulled up saying, quote, And I gotta tell you, to a certain extent, I don't blame the illegal immigrants.

00:08:32.000 I blame the authorities.

00:08:32.000 kicked all the kids out of school tomorrow.

00:08:33.000 Does it feel good? I hope you feel good.

00:08:35.000 I hope you sleep well tonight.

00:08:36.000 A local dad said, how do you feel stealing American taxpayer money?

00:08:40.000 And I got to tell you, to a certain extent, I don't blame the illegal immigrants.

00:08:44.000 I blame the authorities.

00:08:46.000 Why the hell are the authorities not turning these people away?

00:08:48.000 If you were somebody who is coming from say Ecuador, which is a disaster of a country, 1.00

00:08:52.000 and you're trying to go to a better place, you also would want to come to the United States.

00:08:55.000 But it is the responsibility of the American government to protect America's borders.

00:09:00.000 A country without borders is obviously not a country.

00:09:02.000 What's incredible to me is how the left has completely forgotten about this.

00:09:06.000 It's totally insane.

00:09:08.000 In 2015, here was Bernie Sanders making the case that we should not have open borders.

00:09:13.000 Open borders?

00:09:15.000 That's a Koch Brothers proposal.

00:09:17.000 Really?

00:09:18.000 Of course.

00:09:19.000 I mean, that's a right-wing proposal which says, essentially, there is no United States.

00:09:23.000 But it would make a lot of the global poor richer, wouldn't it?

00:09:26.000 And it would make everybody in America poorer.

00:09:28.000 Then you're doing away with the concept of a nation-state.

00:09:31.000 And I don't think there's any country in the world which believes in that.

00:09:37.000 No one believes that, except for apparently large swaths of the Democratic Party.

00:09:40.000 So, how has Border Patrol been tasked?

00:09:42.000 So, Border Patrol has been told their first priority is that once someone claims asylum, you must, as a Border Patrol agent, make direct for them, like beeline directly for them.

00:09:51.000 Now, I recently went down to the border.

00:09:52.000 We're gonna have a ton of material on this that is coming out.

00:09:55.000 But let me tell you, the situation at the border is a full-scale disaster area.

00:09:58.000 Border Patrol agents are being told not to actually police the border.

00:10:01.000 They are essentially acting as a ferry service for illegal immigrants.

00:10:06.000 Which is why you now have the amazing spectacle of illegal immigrants crossing the border and then sitting around and complaining that the border patrol isn't showing up fast enough like you would complain if you showed up at a hotel and the bellman didn't show up fast enough. 0.88

00:10:17.000 Here is CNN highlighting illegals from China complaining about having to wait in the cold.

00:10:21.000 They rush towards us.

00:10:25.000 My mic not even on.

00:10:27.000 But that doesn't stop this crowd of Chinese migrants from venting to producer Yong Song. 0.68

00:10:32.000 They're angry having to wait in the cold for border patrol.

00:10:38.000 So we're all sick.

00:10:40.000 We've been two, three days now.

00:10:42.000 Three makeshift border camps we stop at in eastern San Diego County.

00:10:46.000 Alongside migrants from Latin America, at each camp, we meet dozens from China.

00:10:52.000 Okay, I have a question.

00:10:53.000 Why would you possibly illegally immigrate to a country and believe that it is the responsibility of Border Patrol to house and warm you?

00:11:00.000 Why?

00:11:02.000 And the answer, obviously, is because the Biden administration has made clear that this is what they are going to do.

00:11:05.000 And by the way, these illegal immigrants are not wrong.

00:11:07.000 The Biden administration has, in fact, made clear to Border Patrol agents that their chief function now, 90% of Border Patrol agents have been staffed on essentially busing and administrative duties.

00:11:20.000 At the border, there's an actual sign in certain parts of the border where you push a button for Border Patrol help.

00:11:26.000 I'm not kidding.

00:11:26.000 That's a real thing.

00:11:27.000 Again, we're gonna have a ton of material that's coming out about this because it really is stunning what's happening at our southern border.

00:11:33.000 But the fact that Joe Biden has opened the border wide is clear to literally everyone.

00:11:40.000 Now, what's amazing is that Democrats continue to claim that Joe Biden is on top of this thing.

00:11:43.000 Joe Biden isn't on top of anything.

00:11:45.000 Joe Biden can barely get into a walk-in shower at this point.

00:11:48.000 Here's Senator Chris Coons trying to pretend that it's the unprecedented border crisis

00:11:52.000 is motivating Biden to address the border crisis. But that, of course, is untrue.

00:11:55.000 If Joe Biden wanted to enter and the border crisis tomorrow, he could probably do with a couple of his decade borders.

00:11:59.000 He's not doing any of that.

00:12:00.000 There has to be dramatic action in stopping the flow of illegal immigrants into this country. 1.00

00:12:09.000 Yes, and Joe, that view broadly is shared that we need an immigration system that is safe,

00:12:16.000 that is humane and that is legal.

00:12:18.000 And the numbers of folks who are presenting at the southern border seeking asylum has motivated our president, both in his first State of the Union, to call on Congress to legislatively address this and give him the powers he needs, and in the supplemental package he asked for months ago.

00:12:35.000 To ask for billions of dollars to strengthen border security.

00:12:38.000 We disagree between Republicans and Democrats about what policies will most likely achieve that outcome.

00:12:45.000 But there is a broad awareness that the huge numbers of folks who are transiting Central America and coming through Mexico to our southern border is just not sustainable.

00:12:55.000 Okay, then why don't you stop it?

00:12:57.000 And the answer is what Democrats want is they want more money for administrative functions. 0.77

00:13:02.000 So they just told you Border Patrol 90% staffed on administrative functions.

00:13:05.000 They want more money for administrative functions.

00:13:08.000 They want to be able to broaden the ability of illegal immigrants to enter the country.

00:13:13.000 They do not want the border policed better.

00:13:15.000 And again, the drug cartels control the borders.

00:13:17.000 Okay, let's just be clear about this.

00:13:18.000 This is not individual illegal immigrants who are crossing thousands of miles by themselves, through the snows, through the rain.

00:13:24.000 They are paying coyotes.

00:13:26.000 They are paying Mexican drug cartels in order to get into America. 0.67

00:13:31.000 The industry here is enormous.

00:13:34.000 As I mentioned yesterday, the Mexican drug cartels are making like $13 billion a year just on trafficking human beings across America's southern border.

00:13:43.000 The cartels, they spec out where on the border people should cross.

00:13:47.000 They know exactly where to drop people off.

00:13:49.000 They literally drive up to the border in trucks, literally.

00:13:53.000 They just drive up to the southern border in trucks.

00:13:55.000 Mexico is a sovereign country, so Border Patrol does not have the ability to simply cross the border and do anything.

00:14:00.000 They drive up in trucks loaded with hundreds of illegal immigrants and then just drop them there. 1.00

00:14:04.000 That is the cartels, and they are making money off of it.

00:14:07.000 And yet the Democrats are trying to facilitate all of that.

00:14:11.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

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00:15:22.000 As I say, even some members of the Obama administration are like, this is crazy.

00:15:25.000 Jay Johnson, who is the former DHS secretary under Barack Obama, he has said this is crazy.

00:15:30.000 Stephen Ratner, who served as counselor to the Treasury Secretary under the Obama administration.

00:15:36.000 He has a piece over the New York Times today talking about the situation at our southern border.

00:15:41.000 He says, Democrats want more money to process the backlog.

00:15:44.000 Republicans want to substantially narrow the grounds on which migrants would be permitted to

00:15:47.000 remain in the United States.

00:15:49.000 We need lots of the former and a bit of the latter. No, actually, we need a lot of the latter

00:15:53.000 and not nearly as much of the former. He suggests that the Democrats push for more funding is correct.

00:15:58.000 The country's immediate need is to unclog the immigration court system. 0.93

00:16:01.000 No, that is not the immediate need.

00:16:02.000 The immediate need is to close the border and then figure out what the hell to do with the people here. 1.00

00:16:07.000 The problem is if you unclog the court system, that is going to facilitate more illegal entry.

00:16:13.000 If you unclog the system, all that means is processing more people at the border.

00:16:17.000 Now he's saying that means that you'll get to more court cases faster.

00:16:19.000 Yeah, but ICE isn't deporting anybody.

00:16:20.000 So if people don't show up for the court cases, ICE is not going to go into their houses and then pick them up and throw them out.

00:16:26.000 That is not something that Joe Biden has tasked ICE with doing.

00:16:29.000 So saying that we need more administrative law judges who are going to adjudicate whether someone has a true asylum claim or not, unless they're going to do that within 72 hours, it ain't gonna happen.

00:16:38.000 Any delay where people are released into the country, is going to result in those people remaining in the country. 1.00

00:16:45.000 He says, we must reduce the flow to the border, which will require making immigrating into the U.S. 1.00

00:16:49.000 by such means more difficult.

00:16:51.000 Ian Ratner says, as Republicans have long demanded and Democrats are coming to see as necessary, our obligation under international law to provide asylum need not create chaos.

00:17:00.000 For starters, we should require asylum seekers to apply in Mexico or other countries, right? 1.00

00:17:04.000 This is the remain in Mexico policy that Trump attempted to do and then Biden basically killed.

00:17:10.000 Also, says Ratner, we need to tighten the asylum criteria.

00:17:12.000 For example, we should make a greater distinction in the asylum process between those who followed established procedures and entered the country through an established port of entry and those who crossed along our border between ports of entry.

00:17:22.000 Well, no, actually what you need to do is tighten up what it means to be a person who should receive asylum.

00:17:28.000 Which Ratner admits, he says, while recognizing the need for due process, we should raise the legal standard for consideration for asylum from a significant possibility that asylum would be granted to something closer to the standard used for final decisions in immigration court.

00:17:40.000 We also may need to further limit the use of humanitarian parole, a program expanded by the Biden administration that allows more migrants from places like Venezuela and Nicaragua to temporarily enter the country and apply for relief.

00:17:50.000 As heartbreaking as it may be, we simply cannot take every refugee from every failed state. 1.00

00:17:55.000 Okay, all of that is true.

00:17:56.000 And you know where all of that stuff is?

00:17:57.000 That's all in H.R.

00:17:58.000 2.

00:17:58.000 That's exactly the bill that Democrats are currently rejecting.

00:18:02.000 All of it's in H.R.

00:18:02.000 2.

00:18:03.000 Democrats are currently rejecting it, which means this is an ideological thing.

00:18:06.000 And Joe Biden could simply reinstate the policies that Donald Trump had in place, and the border flow would stop.

00:18:14.000 It would stop.

00:18:15.000 We didn't have anything remotely like this flow at the border under Donald Trump.

00:18:19.000 It just didn't exist in anything remotely like these numbers.

00:18:22.000 There's only one reason for that.

00:18:25.000 The only reason for that is not climate change and it is not discontent south of the border.

00:18:29.000 It is simply because Joe Biden is an open borders president and every single person knows it.

00:18:34.000 And this issue is going to bite Joe Biden directly in the rear as it properly ought to.

00:18:40.000 And meanwhile, more bad news for the Biden administration with regard to the economy.

00:18:44.000 According to Axios, the global economy of the 2020s will be more bleak than the decade that preceded it, with sluggish economic activity, less trade growth, and crushing borrowing costs.

00:18:52.000 This is the new warning from the World Bank on Tuesday morning.

00:18:55.000 They say the global economy so far had its weakest performance in more than 30 years.

00:19:00.000 Growth is slowing.

00:19:01.000 Further threats from geopolitics and tightening credit conditions, quote, as the world nears the midpoint of what was intended to be a transformative decade for development, The global economy is set to rack up a sorry record by the end of 2024, according to the World Bank.

00:19:14.000 Global growth is going to slow for the third consecutive year to 2.4%, down 0.2 percentage points from 2023, according to that Global Economic Prospects Report.

00:19:22.000 That'd be nearly three quarters of a percentage point below the average growth rate in the 2010s, the slowest half decade of GDP growth in three decades.

00:19:31.000 And it's going to get worse, because stagnation, high borrowing costs, The breakup of globalized trade thanks to a lack of American involvement in foreign policy.

00:19:41.000 All of that is going to end up with a more fragmented and polarized world that is going to make things significantly more expensive for you, more difficult for you to get credit, more difficult for you to build a business.

00:19:50.000 That is the future of the United States under our current economic trajectory.

00:19:53.000 We'll get to more on that in a second.

00:19:55.000 First, 2024 is full of unknowns right now.

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00:20:57.000 Just go to stamps.com slash Shapiro.

00:20:59.000 Meanwhile, the incompetence at the White House absolutely continues.

00:21:02.000 We have now learned that Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, was diagnosed with prostate cancer and did not tell the President for literally weeks.

00:21:10.000 According to Politico, doctors on Tuesday disclosed the reason Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was hospitalized on January 1st was due to complications from a late December surgery to treat prostate cancer, answering a major question involving the Pentagon chief's mysterious health situation, but raising further issues with how the episode was handled.

00:21:27.000 This was announced yesterday by the Pentagon Press Secretary, Major General Patrick Ryder.

00:21:30.000 He says the Defense Secretary was treated for prostate cancer.

00:21:32.000 Now, we were told it was an elective surgery.

00:21:34.000 An elective surgery does not mean an unnecessary surgery.

00:21:36.000 It's not like a nose job.

00:21:37.000 It just means that you can elect the time to do it.

00:21:40.000 It's not like an emergency surgery.

00:21:41.000 But it seems like if the Secretary of Defense has a surgery for prostate cancer, he should probably let somebody know.

00:21:48.000 Here's the Pentagon Press Secretary announcing this.

00:21:51.000 This is a statement from Dr. John Maddox, Trauma Medical Director, and Dr. Gregory Chestnut, Center for Prostate Disease Research of the Mirtha Center Director at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

00:22:05.000 Beginning the statement.

00:22:07.000 As part of Secretary Austin's routinely recommended health screening, he has undergone regular prostate-specific antigen PSA surveillance.

00:22:16.000 Changes in his laboratory evaluation in early December 2023 identified prostate cancer, which required treatment.

00:22:25.000 On December 22, 2023, after consultation with his medical team, he was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and underwent a minimally invasive surgical procedure called a prostatectomy to treat and cure prostate cancer.

00:22:41.000 Okay, so then he says that Austin has taken responsibility for transparency issues.

00:22:45.000 Well, I'm so glad.

00:22:47.000 I'm so glad that, well, good for you that you go missing for like a full week and nobody knows, including your number two, and you've taken responsibility.

00:22:52.000 Now, usually responsibility comes with, you know, like a resignation.

00:22:57.000 The department recognizes the understandable concerns expressed by the public, Congress, and the news media in terms of notification timelines and DOD transparency.

00:23:06.000 Now I want to underscore again that Secretary Austin has taken responsibility for the issues with transparency and the department is taking immediate steps to improve our notification procedures.

00:23:18.000 Okay, well, um, you know, why was the notification procedure not already in place?

00:23:22.000 This seems like a pretty obvious one.

00:23:23.000 Why do you need new notification procedures for?

00:23:25.000 I'm getting prostate surgery, and the number two should be aware of that.

00:23:30.000 She was on vacation, by the way, like, abroad.

00:23:33.000 Meanwhile, John Kirby admitted yesterday, the national security spokesperson, he admitted yesterday that Joe Biden was informed yesterday about Austin's prostate cancer.

00:23:42.000 You know, like, the same as we were, which is not great.

00:23:46.000 The Pentagon already talked about when Uh, the Secretary was diagnosed.

00:23:51.000 It was early December.

00:23:53.000 And as their statement said, in consultation with his doctors, he elected to have the procedure done later in the month to coincide with the holidays.

00:24:02.000 And as Kareem rightly also said, the President didn't know about the diagnosis until this morning.

00:24:07.000 But his reaction is, he wishes the Secretary all the best for a speedy recovery.

00:24:12.000 Now, Kirby was asked, um, don't you guys have a credibility problem?

00:24:15.000 So let's just say that, for example, you had a president who seems to be in the throes of dementia.

00:24:19.000 Why would we possibly believe anything you guys have to say about his health situation, considering the SecDef just went completely absent for a week while having prostate cancer surgery and told no one, and no one even bothered to note it inside the administration for a week?

00:24:32.000 Why should we believe anything that this administration tells us about anything ever again?

00:24:39.000 I think we all recognize, and I think the Pentagon has been Very, very honest with themselves about the challenge to credibility by what has transpired here and by how hard it was for them to be fully transparent with the American people.

00:25:03.000 I think we all recognize that.

00:25:05.000 Wait, now, just give me a second now.

00:25:07.000 I know you've got another one coming here, but we all recognize that this Didn't unfold the way it should have on so many levels.

00:25:16.000 Not just the notification process up the chain of command, but the transparency issues.

00:25:19.000 We all recognize that.

00:25:22.000 Well, then why are there no consequences or results?

00:25:25.000 I mean, the fact that Austin is still working there is pretty insane.

00:25:29.000 It's pretty crazy.

00:25:30.000 And it does raise the question.

00:25:31.000 It's like, who's in charge?

00:25:32.000 Why is it?

00:25:33.000 I thought the adults were in charge.

00:25:34.000 Wasn't that the pitch?

00:25:35.000 The pitch was, if you elect Joe Biden and not Donald Trump, you won't have this chaos anymore.

00:25:39.000 The world will be a solid place.

00:25:41.000 We'll go back to normal, right?

00:25:42.000 Normal will be the new normal.

00:25:44.000 And instead, what we get is the world on fire, an economy in the midst of stagnation, the greatest illegal immigration crisis of our lifetimes, and a president who's wandering around into walls occasionally.

00:25:55.000 Like, that's what we got.

00:25:56.000 That doesn't seem like the world's most amazing pitch.

00:25:58.000 Meanwhile, things continue to heat up in the Middle East.

00:26:00.000 And again, one of the reasons things heat up in the Middle East is because of a perception of weakness.

00:26:05.000 The Middle East runs on perception of strength. 0.98

00:26:07.000 It is how the Middle East runs. 0.94

00:26:08.000 It has always run this way.

00:26:10.000 This is not an arena where goodwill is bought by pretty words.

00:26:14.000 That's not how any of this works.

00:26:16.000 And yet, that seems to be precisely the policy that is being undertaken by the Biden administration.

00:26:21.000 They're sending mixed signals all the time.

00:26:23.000 On the one hand, they are providing support to Israel.

00:26:26.000 On the other hand, they're chiding Israel for trying to win a war.

00:26:30.000 On the one hand, they're saying that they're going to prevent Houthi attacks on shipping.

00:26:33.000 On the other hand, they're kind of letting the Houthis attack the shipping and then issuing strongly worded statements.

00:26:38.000 So, which is it?

00:26:40.000 Because it turns out the perception of confusion on the other side leads to a belief by Iran's proxies that they can do what they want in the region.

00:26:47.000 And that is raising the temperature dramatically.

00:26:50.000 According to the Washington Post, quote, disagreements between the United States and Israel over the Jewish state's treatment of Palestinians emerged during Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to Israel on Tuesday as leaders aired opposing views over when Palestinians can return to northern Gaza and receive tax revenue collected by Israel.

00:27:05.000 Blinken told reporters, these are their revenues.

00:27:07.000 They should have them.

00:27:08.000 Who are they?

00:27:09.000 Who are they?

00:27:11.000 By what mechanism will these tax revenues be dispersed?

00:27:14.000 That would be the big question.

00:27:16.000 Like, where does the money go?

00:27:17.000 It's not as though Israel just drops a helicopter filled with money over the Gaza Strip or over Jenin.

00:27:23.000 The money will have to go somewhere.

00:27:25.000 Presumably, it would go to the distributing authority in Gaza still, Hamas, which is still presiding over there.

00:27:32.000 Where would the quote-unquote Palestinian tax money go?

00:27:35.000 It would go to Fatah, the military wing of the Palestinian Authority.

00:27:38.000 The Palestinian Authority is literally paying the families of people who murdered people on October 7th.

00:27:44.000 Why should Israel give money to that group?

00:27:47.000 And these are the mixed signals.

00:27:49.000 We'll get to more in just one second.

00:27:50.000 First, The Ben Shapiro Show is supported by Grand Canyon University, an affordable private Christian university with a vibrant campus in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona.

00:27:58.000 Ranked top 20 in the country by Niche.com, GCU is a missional, Christ-centered university that strives to foster a culture of community, giving, and impact.

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00:28:32.000 So, on the one hand, you have Tony Blinken saying the correct thing, that Hamas could have ended this October 8th simply by surrendering and giving up the hostages, and they didn't.

00:28:39.000 Here was Blinken saying the right thing, and then we'll see Blinken saying many of the wrong things.

00:28:43.000 I think it's very important to remember that everyone has choices to make.

00:28:50.000 And that includes Hamas. 0.91

00:28:53.000 Hamas could have ended this on October 8th by not hiding behind civilians.

00:29:02.000 by putting down its weapons, by surrendering, by releasing the hostages.

00:29:11.000 None of the suffering would have happened if Hamas hadn't done what it did on October 7th and had it made different decisions thereafter. 0.87

00:29:24.000 Okay, so that happens to be correct.

00:29:26.000 But then, on the other hand, he's like trying to hold Israel's arms behind its back. 0.59

00:29:30.000 He suggested yesterday that the big problem is that Israel is somehow taking steps undercutting Palestinians' ability to govern themselves effectively.

00:29:37.000 I have a question.

00:29:38.000 When have Palestinians ever governed themselves effectively? 1.00

00:29:41.000 Name a time.

00:29:42.000 Like, any time.

00:29:45.000 Buehler?

00:29:46.000 Buehler?

00:29:48.000 This crisis is clarified.

00:29:50.000 You can't have one without the other.

00:29:52.000 And you can't achieve either goal without an integrated regional approach.

00:29:57.000 To make this possible, Israel must be a partner to Palestinian leaders who are willing to lead their people in living side-by-side in peace with Israel and as neighbors.

00:30:09.000 And Israel must stop taking steps that undercut Palestinians' ability to govern themselves effectively.

00:30:14.000 Extremist settler violence carried out with impunity, settlement expansion, demolitions, evictions, all make it harder Not easier for Israel to achieve lasting peace and security. 1.00

00:30:25.000 This is absolute stupidity. 1.00

00:30:27.000 This is stupidity. 1.00

00:30:28.000 And what he's saying at the beginning of that quote where he says the goals are attainable together. 1.00

00:30:32.000 What are the goals?

00:30:33.000 One would be peace with the Palestinians and the other would be peace with the surrounding Arab states. 0.64

00:30:36.000 So he's going back to the old John Kerry line that the only way to achieve peace in the region is to make concessions to terrorist groups.

00:30:42.000 Which, of course, is a lie and the opposite of the truth.

00:30:44.000 Israel was able to engage in the Abraham Accords under the Trump administration because the Trump administration made clear that economic ties with Israel in no way depended on Israel making concessions to, say, the Palestinian Authority.

00:30:56.000 When he suggests that what's undercutting Palestinian self-governance is, for example, settlement expansion, why?

00:31:03.000 Why?

00:31:03.000 I have a question.

00:31:04.000 Why is building an extra bedroom in a front?

00:31:05.000 Why does that have anything to do with the fact that there has not been an election inside Palestinian governed areas for nearly two decades?

00:31:12.000 Explain.

00:31:14.000 Seriously, I want to hear why.

00:31:15.000 I want to hear why it is that Israel allowing, for example, the expansion of Neve Daniel is somehow impacting the fact that the Palestinians refuse to elect governments that actually pick up the trash. 0.88

00:31:28.000 Please explain, please explain how Israel completely abandoning the Gaza Strip, removing 8,000 Jews from the Gaza Strip.

00:31:34.000 No settlement activity, nothing happening there.

00:31:36.000 Complete self-governance by Hamas. 0.87

00:31:38.000 Why exactly did that not result in something beautiful?

00:31:41.000 Was that also because of Israel? 1.00

00:31:42.000 Like, this is all so stupid. 0.99

00:31:43.000 But again, the reason that he's sending these mixed signals is in the hopes that somehow this is going to buy the love of the Egyptians or the Saudis. 1.00

00:31:49.000 He's completely misreading the room.

00:31:50.000 The Egyptians and the Saudis do not believe that the Palestinians are capable of moderation or self-governance.

00:31:57.000 You know why they believe that?

00:31:58.000 You know how I know they believe that?

00:31:59.000 They won't take in any Palestinian refugees! 1.00

00:32:01.000 None!

00:32:03.000 And one of the big questions here that the United States keeps raising is, you know, there are members of the Israeli government who have said that they want Palestinians to leave Gaza.

00:32:09.000 Okay, forget about that for a second, because Netanyahu says he's not going to do that.

00:32:12.000 Let's talk instead about the fact that if you were living in Gaza, might you want to leave?

00:32:17.000 Hey, might you want to?

00:32:19.000 Not a great place to live.

00:32:19.000 Haven't been a great place to live for a very long time.

00:32:21.000 Not a lot of people moving to Gaza.

00:32:23.000 Not tons of people who are like, you know where I've, even before all of this, were like, you know where I'd love to live?

00:32:28.000 Under the auspices of Hamas. 0.83

00:32:30.000 In Gaza.

00:32:32.000 So what if people want to leave?

00:32:34.000 Well, Egypt won't take them. 0.98

00:32:35.000 Saudi won't take them. 1.00

00:32:37.000 Jordan won't take them.

00:32:39.000 No one will take them.

00:32:40.000 Why do you think that is?

00:32:41.000 Why do you think that is?

00:32:42.000 Could it be because, historically speaking, Palestinian populations have been a destabilizing force in every region where they have entered? 1.00

00:32:49.000 And could that be because they are extremely polarized?

00:32:52.000 Could it be because the Palestinian population itself is extremely, extremely radical. 0.97

00:32:59.000 And that doesn't mean that everybody's a terrorist, doesn't mean that people deserve to be killed.

00:33:02.000 What it does mean is that if you're going to assess the security situation in the Middle East

00:33:06.000 without that factor, you're completely missing the deciding factor on this issue.

00:33:10.000 You're saying that Israel can only make some sort of peace with Saudi Arabia, for example,

00:33:15.000 by somehow making concessions to governments that dictatorially rule radical populations.

00:33:21.000 I don't even understand the logic there.

00:33:23.000 It doesn't make any sense at all.

00:33:24.000 But it's those mixed signals that are being read in the region and Iran is reading that, which is why Iran continues to push. 0.85

00:33:30.000 Iran isn't isn't ratcheting things down.

00:33:32.000 Iran is ratcheting things up. 0.99

00:33:33.000 Why?

00:33:33.000 Because Iran is going to continue to poke and they're going to continue to prod until they're slapped across the head by somebody.

00:33:38.000 It wouldn't require the United States to quote-unquote invade Iran.

00:33:42.000 It wouldn't require a full-scale war with Iran.

00:33:44.000 It would require, for example, killing a bunch of Houthis along the coast in Yemen to stop them from holding up global shipping, which is something the United States actually does have a pretty strong direct interest in.

00:33:54.000 But the Biden administration refuses to do any of that.

00:33:57.000 Meanwhile, the question becomes on the other side of the aisle, can Donald Trump take advantage of all of this chaos or is he going to create a grease fire here on the stove of his own?

00:34:06.000 We'll get to that in a second.

00:34:07.000 First, you may have noticed that we at The Daily Wire, we like biology because biology says there are only two sexes.

00:34:13.000 We're not afraid to say it.

00:34:14.000 But some of our loyal customers pointed out a flaw in our Jeremy's shop.

00:34:17.000 We only cater to one of the sexes. 0.93

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00:34:23.000 And that's why we have Jeremy's Razors for the ladies. 1.00

00:34:26.000 Because women deserve the same quality woke-free blades as men. 0.99

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00:34:44.000 Okay, meanwhile, Now, again, you would imagine that all of this would provide fodder for a Donald Trump run.

00:34:49.000 Now, let's be clear, Donald Trump isn't yet the nominee.

00:34:51.000 There are some polls out of, for example, New Hampshire that are showing Nikki Haley in a pretty solid position in New Hampshire to possibly win that state.

00:34:58.000 If Chris Christie, it's hilarious to me that Chris Christie continues to pretend that he's a person in this race.

00:35:02.000 I mean, you want to talk about somebody who has an ego problem?

00:35:04.000 I'm not sure there's ever been a politician like Chris Christie who literally just stays in races to allow the person he claims to be the greatest threat to the Republican Party to win.

00:35:13.000 Like, Chris Christie being in the race in New Hampshire is so unbelievably insane. 0.98

00:35:16.000 I can't even explain how dumb that is. 0.96

00:35:18.000 I mean, in New Hampshire right now, the latest polling in New Hampshire from CNN and University of New Hampshire shows Trump up 39-32 on Haley. 0.98

00:35:25.000 That's spitting distance.

00:35:27.000 And Chris Christie is pulling 12%.

00:35:28.000 Why is Chris Christie in this race?

00:35:32.000 I love that he's basically like, screw it, man. 1.00

00:35:34.000 I'm staying in no matter what, for no reason, just to be a jackass. 0.99

00:35:37.000 You got to respect that. 0.98

00:35:38.000 You got to respect the play.

00:35:41.000 Meanwhile, in Iowa, by every available poll, Donald Trump is way out ahead of the field.

00:35:47.000 According to most polls, basically, Haley and DeSantis are running neck and neck in Iowa.

00:35:51.000 Now, again, Iowa is not a direct polling state.

00:35:54.000 Iowa's a caucus state.

00:35:55.000 So the fact that DeSantis has done a lot of heavy on-the-ground lifting in Iowa, I think that means he outperforms his poll numbers in Iowa.

00:36:02.000 But right now, obviously, Trump is up way ahead of the rest of the field.

00:36:06.000 When it comes to South Carolina, I'm always surprised that they don't do more polling of South Carolina.

00:36:11.000 It's always kind of shocking to me.

00:36:13.000 But there has not actually been a lot of polling of South Carolina in the GOP nomination process.

00:36:18.000 The polling that there has been at this point shows Trump well ahead of the field.

00:36:23.000 The latest poll average from FiveThirtyEight puts Trump up at 52.9 percent, Haley at 24, and DeSantis down at like 12.7 percent.

00:36:30.000 So like way ahead of the rest of the field combined.

00:36:32.000 If Haley were to win New Hampshire, you would expect to see a bit of an upsurge, but Let's assume, for the sake of argument, because that's where the stats are, that Trump is the nominee.

00:36:39.000 Well, the reason Trump would be the nominee and the reason that Trump presumably would be a formidable challenger to Joe Biden is because, again, people look at 2019 and they look at 2023 and they say 2019 was better than 2023.

00:36:52.000 I think most sane and rational people don't blame Trump for COVID because how could you possibly do that?

00:36:57.000 That would be a weird thing to do.

00:36:59.000 Jamie Dimon, he recently said that the reason that people are voting for Trump is because the economy under Donald Trump was better.

00:37:07.000 I think we should stop insulting the other side, including MAGA.

00:37:10.000 I've mentioned publicly many times that a lot of people voting for President Trump, not because they believe in his family values, but they look at some of the things he did.

00:37:18.000 He grew the economy.

00:37:19.000 He was right about NATO, that they should spend more money.

00:37:22.000 He was right about pointing out about China.

00:37:25.000 You know, he was right about that, you know, some regulations do not cause positive output.

00:37:28.000 So that's why they're voting for him.

00:37:30.000 And I think the Democrats should be a little more thoughtful when they talk about MAGA and say, why?

00:37:35.000 Not like, and then don't act like every attribute of Trump is an attribute of them.

00:37:39.000 It's just not true.

00:37:40.000 Okay, he is right about all that.

00:37:43.000 So you know what would make this a lot easier is if Trump would just talk about that.

00:37:46.000 Again, Trump has the easiest campaign in the world.

00:37:48.000 His campaign involves looking like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, pointing at Joe Biden.

00:37:53.000 That's the entire campaign.

00:37:54.000 He just goes, and that's it.

00:37:56.000 That's the campaign.

00:37:58.000 Right.

00:37:58.000 Look at that guy.

00:37:59.000 That's the campaign.

00:38:00.000 Instead, we're going to get the grease fire.

00:38:03.000 So apparently Trump's camp trying to claim that he has presidential immunity for everything involving January 6.

00:38:09.000 That's a weird claim because, again, there is a difference between Donald Trump's sort of political Aspirations and Donald Trump's public duties as president of the United States.

00:38:19.000 And so the arguments that his lawyers are now being forced to make on behalf of presidential immunity are a little weird.

00:38:23.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the legal reckoning for Donald Trump entered a critical stretch Tuesday as a Washington federal appellate court signaled it would reject the former president's claim he's immune from prosecution on charges he plotted to overturn the 2020 election.

00:38:35.000 Now, by the way, this doesn't speak to the guilt or innocence here.

00:38:38.000 It doesn't speak to whether it is criminal to espouse a specious legal theory, which is, in my opinion, what Donald Trump was doing for a couple of months there.

00:38:46.000 That's not criminal activity. 0.97

00:38:47.000 That's just arguing really, really dumb crap in a court, which people do pretty frequently in this country, as it turns out. 0.91

00:38:52.000 But putting that aside, the presidential immunity theory that Trump is putting forward here is just bad. 0.96

00:38:57.000 It's not a good presidential immunity theory.

00:39:00.000 So he is suggesting, apparently, that he has immunity for literally everything he did while he was president of the United States.

00:39:10.000 In fact, Trump warned of bedlam He was denied immunity.

00:39:14.000 Here he was explaining.

00:39:17.000 Numbers came out today that are really very mind boggling if you happen to be Joe Biden.

00:39:26.000 And I think they feel this is the way they're going to try and win.

00:39:29.000 And that's not the way it goes.

00:39:30.000 It'll be bedlam in the country.

00:39:31.000 It's a very bad thing.

00:39:32.000 It's a very bad precedent.

00:39:34.000 As we said, it's the opening of a Pandora's box.

00:39:37.000 and that's a very sad thing that's happened with this whole situation.

00:39:43.000 When they talk about threat to democracy, that's your real threat to democracy.

00:39:50.000 Okay, so it is a threat to democracy to remove him from ballots will innovate.

00:39:52.000 That's a threat to democracy.

00:39:53.000 It is not a threat to democracy to say the president does not have immunity for literally everything he does while he's president of the United States.

00:39:59.000 The argument his lawyers are making is that the impeachment clause in the Constitution requires that the president be impeached before he is criminally tried for any sort of offense.

00:40:09.000 And so the judges were like, uh, really?

00:40:11.000 The question they asked was if the president of the United States, for example, Ordered Seal Team Six to assassinate his political rivals.

00:40:21.000 Could he then be charged on that without being impeached?

00:40:26.000 And Trump's lawyers were like, no, he'd have to be impeached first.

00:40:32.000 Which is a wild statement.

00:40:34.000 I mean, that seems very, very difficult.

00:40:37.000 The idea that somehow the President could order the murder of his political rivals, and immunity would still guard him for that.

00:40:45.000 Like, murder domestic American political rivals.

00:40:50.000 First of all, that would create the prospect, very obviously and easily, of the President of the United States, let's say, for example, he were impeached, and he had not yet been convicted by the Senate. 0.66

00:41:00.000 So he would order SEAL Team 6 to kill everyone in the Senate who would vote for his conviction.

00:41:04.000 And now there's no one left to vote for his conviction and thus criminal conviction.

00:41:07.000 Again, this is this argument is not going to fly in court.

00:41:11.000 It's just not going to.

00:41:12.000 So Trump is not going to be immune.

00:41:13.000 The problem is, if we're taught every moment we're talking about that sort of stuff, we're not talking about the fact that Joe Biden is an awful, terrible, very not good president.

00:41:20.000 And let's be real about this.

00:41:21.000 When it comes to the feeling of chaos in the country, it is not simply coming from Trump.

00:41:26.000 Trump's best argument is, in fact, an argument he is making, which is that the threat to democracy is coming from inside the House.

00:41:33.000 Joe Biden is the one who's claiming his opponents are insurrectionists and therefore, theoretically, ought to be banned from ballots.

00:41:40.000 Meanwhile, we do live in a country where journalists routinely joke, apparently, about the assassination of Donald Trump.

00:41:45.000 Caught on a hot mic yesterday, Donald Trump was arriving in court on this particular case.

00:41:49.000 Journalists were caught on a hot mic joking about Donald Trump being shot.

00:41:54.000 You know, the worst part is, even if he has his window open and he's hanging out of it, he'll be on the other side of the smoke screen.

00:42:01.000 I mean, if he's driving, we've got a good shot.

00:42:03.000 Yeah, if he's driving with the front window open?

00:42:05.000 Yeah.

00:42:05.000 Or if it's a convertible?

00:42:07.000 Yeah.

00:42:08.000 I wasn't thinking about that.

00:42:10.000 Yeah.

00:42:11.000 Like, if he just pulls up like that... Like JFK?

00:42:15.000 There's like a JFK, a Lincoln... If you don't talk to him, you're dead.

00:42:21.000 No, that's... I don't know.

00:42:22.000 Maybe someone told JFK, you know what you should do?

00:42:25.000 You should take a convertible.

00:42:29.000 nice out. And I'm joking about the JFK assassination.

00:42:32.000 OK, we still don't know who these journalists are, but I have a feeling that they will be exposed and probably lose

00:42:37.000 their jobs over something like that.

00:42:39.000 All of this, obviously, contributing to a feeling of great unease among members of the American population on

00:42:44.000 both sides of the aisle.

00:42:44.000 As I've said before, we have now set up a model by which violence is very likely to break out no matter who wins

00:42:49.000 the election. If Donald Trump wins, do you think Democrats are going to take that lying down?

00:42:51.000 Or do you think that they're going to claim that dictatorship is inevitable now?

00:42:56.000 I mean, that's literally what Joe Biden is arguing, that the Nazis are in charge if Joe Biden wins.

00:42:59.000 I mean, if Donald Trump wins.

00:43:01.000 And if Donald Trump wins, do you think that things will remain calm in the streets?

00:43:05.000 I think not.

00:43:06.000 Meanwhile, if Joe Biden wins at this point, and Donald Trump has been hit by his DOJ in two separate jurisdictions, in Washington, D.C.

00:43:15.000 and Florida, Do you think that Donald Trump supporters are going to take that lying down?

00:43:20.000 Or is his case that he has been rigged out of the election again going to be a lot more credible this time than it even was last time?

00:43:27.000 Things are going to get very, very nasty in the country, which of course is why the Washington Post is running pieces like violent political threats surge as 2024 begins haunting American democracy.

00:43:37.000 Now, the entire article is largely about the evils of Donald Trump supporters, but let's be clear.

00:43:42.000 The threats of violence are not coming from only one side of the aisle.

00:43:47.000 The amount of violence that is now being threatened against common American citizens, forget about public officials, is really significant.

00:43:53.000 And it's going to continue to rise.

00:43:55.000 Because the feeling is that institutions have failed.

00:43:58.000 And as the feeling that institutions are failing grows in impact, chaos comes in its wake.

00:44:03.000 By the way, this is not a uniquely American problem.

00:44:05.000 You're starting to see this literally all over the world.

00:44:07.000 There's a feeling that the institutions of government in many Western countries have failed large swaths of the population, and people are beginning to take to the streets in response.

00:44:17.000 So a big story that's been undercovered by the media has been this huge farmer protest in Berlin.

00:44:23.000 According to the Associated Press, farmers blocked highway access roads in parts of Germany on Monday and snarled traffic elsewhere with their tractors, launching a week of protest against a government plan to scrap tax breaks on diesel used in agriculture.

00:44:34.000 Chancellor Olaf Scholz's unpopular three-party coalition infuriated farmers last month by drawing up plans to abolish a car tax exemption for farming vehicles and diesel tax breaks.

00:44:42.000 Those proposals were part of a package to fill a giant $18 billion hole in the 2024 budget.

00:44:48.000 That hole in the budget is really an environmentalist hole in the budget.

00:44:52.000 Here is what some of the pictures look like.

00:44:55.000 I mean, you can see it.

00:44:55.000 This is insane.

00:44:56.000 I mean, they're snarling up like all of Berlin. 0.93

00:44:59.000 Here's some of the video.

00:45:00.000 Looks very much like the Canadian truckers protest over the COVID-19 shutdowns in Canada.

00:45:05.000 And you're going to see this sort of stuff happening in Western capitals all over the place.

00:45:10.000 The protests are under scrutiny after a group of farmers on Thursday prevented the Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck from disembarking a ferry in a small North Sea port as he returned from a personal trip to an offshore island.

00:45:20.000 That incident drew condemnation from both government and opposition figures as well as the Farmers Association.

00:45:25.000 There are a lot of people on the left in Germany who are deeply worried that this is going to boost the right, which of course it will.

00:45:31.000 I mean, that's exactly what happened, by the way, in the Netherlands.

00:45:34.000 So all over Europe, there are lots of farmers who are saying, listen, you have put your green dreams on our back.

00:45:41.000 You've said that we can't farm anymore.

00:45:42.000 You've put all sorts of restrictions on our use of nitrogen in the soil, for example.

00:45:46.000 You have basically forced us to consolidate all of our farms and take out debt to do so, and then you've prevented us from doing the farming.

00:45:51.000 This is what led to the giant Dutch nitrogen crisis, which is still rocking the country.

00:45:56.000 So that's happening in Germany.

00:45:58.000 It's happening in the Netherlands as well.

00:46:02.000 All of this is just part and parcel of a broader right-wing uprising that is happening across the continent.

00:46:11.000 Over in Poland, you have a true constitutional crisis that is breaking out as well.

00:46:16.000 So Poland has a very weird kind of government structure.

00:46:19.000 You have the prime minister who has most of the power, but you have the president who has veto power and the ability to approve governments and not approve governments.

00:46:25.000 You also have two separate courts, the Supreme Court and the constitutional Court of Justice in Poland and they sort of cover different areas.

00:46:33.000 Well, it turns out this division of power has led to the domination of one of those divisions by the right wing and one of those divisions by a European integrationist party led by Donald Tusk.

00:46:42.000 Well, this, in turn, has led to a standoff between these two wings of the Polish government.

00:46:48.000 According to Politico, in a dramatic escalation of Poland's battle to restore rule of law, the police entered the country's presidential palace on Tuesday evening and took two MPs into custody who had been hiding under the protection of the president, whose name is Andrzej Duda, after being sentenced to prison terms for abuse of power.

00:47:03.000 The arrest cut to the heart of a fight between Duda and the new prime minister, Donald Tusk, who is seeking to unravel eight years of rule by the Nationalist and Conservative Law and Justice Party.

00:47:12.000 Duda is aligned with PIS and still has considerable ability to thwart Tusk's attempts at reform.

00:47:17.000 Basically, there were two convicted lawmakers who had been given a pardon, and Tusk is now arguing that the pardon was no good, and the president saying the pardon absolutely was good.

00:47:27.000 Duda says he pardoned these two in 2015 during their trial for using fake documents in an earlier attempt to incriminate coalition allies of law and justice.

00:47:34.000 They were hoping to destroy that smaller coalition party and then integrate the members, and apparently that failed and the government blew apart.

00:47:41.000 In 2017, Poland's Supreme Court ruled the presidential pardon was not effective because it was granted before a final verdict in the case.

00:47:46.000 So they were saying that you can't preemptively grant a pardon before somebody's been convicted in criminal court.

00:47:51.000 But the Constitutional Tribunal, which is the other court which usually describes constitutional issues, they said that the pardon was in order.

00:47:58.000 So now you have a battle between the Constitutional Tribunal and the Supreme Court, between the Prime Minister and the President in Poland.

00:48:05.000 All of this because you basically have gridlock in Poland over the future of the country.

00:48:09.000 The parliament of Poland is bicameral, but the lower house is called the Sejm.

00:48:14.000 It's spelled S-E-J-M.

00:48:16.000 It's pronounced same in sort of American.

00:48:19.000 And the biggest party there is the Law and Justice Party.

00:48:21.000 They still have 194 out of 460 seats.

00:48:24.000 In the parliament.

00:48:25.000 And so they still dominate a lot of the proceedings.

00:48:28.000 So you have this breakdown in Poland. 0.84

00:48:29.000 You have breakdown in Poland. 1.00

00:48:31.000 You have breakdown in Germany.

00:48:32.000 You have breakdown in the Netherlands.

00:48:34.000 You have breakdown in France as well.

00:48:36.000 So one of the big problems in France right now is that Emmanuel Macron is deeply unpopular.

00:48:40.000 The rising party is the nationalist party that is led by Marine Le Pen.

00:48:46.000 Right now, the Le Pen party is leading in the polling by a significant margin.

00:48:51.000 According to Politico in Europe, Macron is looking to rejuvenate his troubled second term after facing mass protests against pensions last year and bitter dissent within his own camp over an immigration bill which left his governing coalition badly bruised.

00:49:04.000 Macron's pick comes as the president, he just picked a new prime minister who's like a 34 year old guy and he passed over a bunch of members of his own party in order to do so creating real discontent within his own coalition.

00:49:13.000 His pick comes as the president currently holds a 30% approval rating.

00:49:17.000 His coalition trails the far-right national rally by about 10 points in European election polling.

00:49:22.000 So France is about to turn to the right.

00:49:23.000 You have Italy, which has turned to the right.

00:49:24.000 You have Germany, which is beginning to turn to the right. 0.67

00:49:26.000 And you have France, which is starting to turn to the right.

00:49:28.000 In fact, this is leading to crisis calls, I think good, inside the European Parliament.

00:49:32.000 Because inside the European Parliament, there is a rise of right-wing parties.

00:49:38.000 This means that the head of the European Parliament's Liberals, who theoretically could create sort of a center-right coalition, is outright refusing to work with any of the right-wing parties.

00:49:47.000 Polls suggest that the current coalition of conservative social democrats and liberals in the European Parliament will cobble together a majority, but only just, because right and far-right groups are surging in popularity.

00:49:58.000 The head of that liberal coalition, whose name is Stéphane Séjourne, he said we are risking an ungovernable Europe.

00:50:05.000 It is quite real in terms of arithmetic.

00:50:07.000 Sejourne is closed with Emmanuel Macron.

00:50:09.000 He said he won't agree to work with the far right in the next European Parliament.

00:50:12.000 He refused to align with the Nationalist European Conservatives and Reformist Group, the ECR, which contains the Law and Justice Party, as well as Spain's Vox Party, as well as presumably the National Rally Party in France.

00:50:24.000 So they're going to try to hold the center.

00:50:26.000 Good luck to them.

00:50:27.000 Good luck to them.

00:50:27.000 Because again, as all of these institutions feel like they have bit off more than they can chew and they are failing and their aspirations for a green new world order are falling apart, the backlash is very real and it's only going to grow.

00:50:41.000 Alrighty guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.

00:50:43.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

00:50:43.000 We'll be joined on the line by Dr. Eitan Chaim, a whistleblower out of Texas Children's Hospital.

00:50:48.000 He uncovered the hospital was medically transitioning children, allegedly.

00:50:51.000 He's now being investigated by the DOJ for violating HIPAA.

00:50:54.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:50:55.000 Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 10, 2024

A Country Without Borders

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